This morning I woke up earlier than I would have liked. It’s incredibly warm these days and I still have to find the right night environment to sleep well in these summer nights.
As always happens when I sleep less than eight hours, I woke up slow and tired, my head a bit light, and my balance a bit compromised. Nothing visible to the naked eye (I didn’t trip on my way to the kitchen) but very much clear to my inner radar.
As I went on with my morning routine with my teas, meditation, writing, and a bit of stretching, I found myself engaging with these activities in a random order, distracted and approximative. Time felt different: slow and rarefied. As I sat down to read something, I realized that this “stoned” way of being due to the lack of sleep was keeping me immersed in the present moment. The uncertainty of my movements and the fogginess of my thoughts were hindering my capacity to take on the day as usual, with some kind of mental order about what to do next and thoughts lined up like soldiers.
In the subversion of my routines, I found presence. In the confusion of my sleepy mind, I had no choice but to get still and become very conscious. Of everything. As the time slowly ticked by, the freshness of this new day seeped into me.
This got me thinking about how we may get so caught up in what we know that even the healthiest of habits become a means of distraction from true presence, a way to control our experience of life, thus detaching us from it and its impermanent nature.
By performing a series of known gestures and structured actions I get into the illusion of being present in my reality, whereas I discover that it is at the exact juncture of my expectations’ disappointment that I find the essence of life — that unpredictable, raw quality hitting my senses at once and making very clear that I have no idea of the mystery I’m bathing in.
Blessed be all the unreceived answers, frustrated predictions, unplanned events, unspoken words, and unexpected happenings. The hiccups of life that shake us from the delusion of being in control of even a second of our existence.
Habits can be a wonderful grounding tool, at least for a stage of our Soul evolution, but getting grounded in groundlessness, certain of not knowing, humble, and open to mystery, is for me the only way in which I truly feel one with the eternal flow.